Design and Implementation of a High-Power, Discrete IGBT-Based Electric Drive for Rapid Accelerations

The increasing adoption of direct current (DC) systems, driven by renewable energy sources and diverse DC loads highlights the need for efficient fault protection mechanisms. This research paper presents a cost-effective and compact 500 A electric drive system specifically designed for an axial flux machine-based actuator in a hybrid DC breaker application. The study introduces a simulation model of the electric drive system using MATLAB Simulink, incorporating a time-based modulation scheme for precise constant current control. Experimental tests were conducted to validate the drive’s performance. The results demonstrate that increasing the gate voltage from 15 V to 25 V, a single discrete insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) in a TO-247 package efficiently handles a constant current of 500 A for 1 ms, surpassing its nominal current by a factor of five. This capability enables the motor to generate high accelerations. The research also discusses in detail the factors, energy losses, junction temperature rise, gate voltage limitations, and the reverse-biased safe operating area (RBSOA), ensuring the drive’s reliability. Furthermore, the utilization of an ultrafast soft recovery diode with a reverse recovery time of 29 ns ensures near-zero diode reverse recovery current, leading to reduced IGBT switching losses.